The Rise, Repression, and Rebuilding of Little Pakistan

The scope of 20th-century discrimination against Asian Americans was not limited to legislation. Emboldened by the sweeping array of new immigration restrictions, as well as the lasting impact of older pieces of discriminatory legislation like 1854's People v. Hall, discrimination often quickly escalated to brutal violence.^¹ From the mid-1800s onward, Asian American laborers had been exploited by employers who used them for cheap labor. Though the jobs they worked were often lower-paying and more dangerous, resentment festered in racist white laborers who regarded them as "job stealers."^¹ Under these conditions and with tacit (and legalized) social approval for anti-Asian xenophobia, mob violence against Asian Americans became commonplace across the nation.^¹ From the 1850s to the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of Chinese laborers were systematically harassed and driven out of cities across states on the West Coast.^¹ In 1853, 3,000 Chinese were working in California’s Shasta County.^¹ By the end of the century, only 160 were left. 

These trends continued across the West Coast, from California to Colorado. As of 1907, Oregon was the only Western U.S. state that had not erupted in communal anti-Asian violence.^¹ This changed on March 21, 1910, in the town of St. Johns, Oregon, when over 200 white laborers, the mayor, the police chief, and two police officers attempted to violently expel hundreds of Indian residents from the town.^¹ The men, who were Sikh farmers and former British military veterans, primarily worked at lumber mills.^¹ During the riots, they were robbed and beaten, and one man was even thrown out of a second story window while local authorities watched or participated in the violence.

As it continues to today, the media shaped the lens through which the non-Asian American public viewed the prospect of Asian immigration. Throughout the early 20th century, both mainstream news outlets and serialized magazines across the nation released racist, fear-mongering articles and political cartoons that depicted Asians as morally depraved and a threat to the economic security of white Americans. Similar to the "job stealers" myth that drove the mob violence in California and Oregon, Asian immigrants were perceived as competitors to white laborers, and their presence in the United States was considered “moral and racial pollution.”^¹ Political cartoons often depicted these male laborers as barbaric, dirty, and even as sexually violent lechers who posed a threat to the safety of white women.

By passing the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924, the United States government legitimized these biased media representations and emboldened the public’s targeted violence against Asian Americans. When Asians seeking economic opportunities were terrorized in the early 20th century, they did not find protection from the government, but rather, persecution. Fears of Asian laborers dominating the economy, interracial relationships threatening white racial purity, and stereotypes of Asians being disease-ridden all contributed to anti-Asian sentiment that culminated in these discriminatory laws, codifying racism into the legislative framework of the nation. 

The restrictive and racist immigration policies described in the prior two sections remained in place until the mid-20th century. Directly influenced by rising Cold War tensions and the "threat" of the Civil Rights Movement, the government strategically moved to reverse anti-Asian immigration legislation.

After the end of WWII in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union — who were uneasy but mutually beneficial allies in the latter years of the war — became locked in an intense geopolitical rivalry that would become known as the Cold War. This rivalry was the result of tensions over ideological disputes and struggles for international dominance. In an attempt to "stop the spread of communism," the United States government engaged in violent interventions in countless nations across the globe.^¹ For example, American intervention in Vietnam led to the Vietnam War, a massive ground invasion by the U.S. Army which spanned from 1955 to 1975. During these two decades of conflict, American troops unleashed systemic destruction of villages, chemical warfare, violent assaults, and sexual violence on the Vietnamese people.^¹ The United States Department of Defense, in the years following the war, estimated approximately 1.2 million Vietnamese civilian casualties.^¹

The United States government also launched a series of interventions in Latin America to create political instability and establish puppet regimes with American backing. In 1954, the United States backed a coup d'état in Guatemala, subsequently throwing the country into a brutal six-year civil war.^¹ They also invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965 — in the midst of a civil war that occurred after the U.S. government ousted their progressive, democratically elected president, leading to public outrage and attempts to reinstate him.^¹ In 1961, the first ever democratically elected president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated in a U.S.-backed plot. After his murder, according to the U.S. Office of the Historian, “the United States repeatedly attempted to create a stable, pro-Western regime through vote buying and financial support for pro-Western candidates.”^¹These interventions destabilized foreign governments and led to the deaths of millions of people, violating their human rights and imposing lengthy, bloody military conflicts upon their countries. None of these interventions were anomalies or political mistakes. Rather, they broadly represent the lengths the U.S. government was willing to go to in order to secure its interests and power during the Cold War. Until the end of the Cold War, which came with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and Soviet Union governments spent decades racing to establish themselves as the dominant global superpower. 

One of the Soviet Union's most powerful ideological weapons was pointing out American political hypocrisy. They often harshly criticized white supremacy in the United States, challenging the nation’s self-positioning as a "global defender of democracy" while perpetuating racial violence, segregation, and Jim Crow laws against their own non-white citizens. Soviet propaganda often highlighted the horrific racial experiences of minorities in America, particularly those of African-Americans. As Black veterans returned home from WWII, having risked their lives fighting fascism overseas, they now found that a service uniform made them a target. As early as the 19th century, when Black soldiers fought in the Civil War, white people feared that "Black soldiers who had experienced the pride of military service would resist the disenfranchisement, segregation, and second-class citizenship that still characterized the African American experience."^¹ The same warped logic remained true for returning Black soldiers post-WWII, whose service abroad often made them the targets of white terror, especially in the American South. 

"[T]he colour bar is the greatest propaganda gift any country could give the Kremlin in its persistent bid for the affections of the coloured races of the world."^¹ THE OBSERVER (CEYLON, 1949)

Soviet propaganda frequently called attention to the issue of lynchings as a tool to instill fear and social compliance in Black communities. As historian Mary Dudziak notes, “Lynchings and beatings of African Americans, sometimes involving local law enforcement officials, were covered in the media in this country and abroad.”^¹ Graphic visual materials were also used as propaganda, as Soviet posters depicting brutalized African Americans and hooded Ku Klux Klan members were widely circulated as another means of discrediting American democracy. The propaganda critiqued the United States by drawing attention to its lengthy, bloody history of discrimination against racial minorities, and “depicted racism as an integral part of the American system.”^¹ Posters depicting the Soviet Union as an egalitarian worker’s paradise were created to contrast with images of American violence, corruption, and racism. These images, alongside press releases, were carefully curated to support the Soviet's media offensive during the Cold War. 

While these critiques of American racism were being instrumentalized by the Soviet Union, the Civil Rights Movement was growing in the United States. Many Black Americans and allies engaged in civil disobedience to demand racial equality in the form of protests, boycotts, and strikes, while other Black organizers focused on legal advocacy. Fears about the United States’s global image and growing social unrest within the country led to the eventual passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which legally outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, religion, and sex.^¹ While the 1964 Act was passed in response to social movements demanding rights, resources, and equality for Black communities, it also led to the re-examination of earlier anti-Asian immigration policies. 

In the following year, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, was passed. It abolished the national origins quota system and increased the amount of immigrants allowed into the country, reversing some of the effects of the racist, exclusionary immigration policies passed decades before.^¹ 25 years later, the Immigration Act of 1990 would further increase the number of immigrants annually granted entry and would introduce a diversity lottery to encourage immigration from nations with historically lower rates of immigration to the United States. The complete reversal of discriminatory immigration policies led to a significant increase in Asian immigration and the eventual formation of Asian ethnic enclaves — like Little Pakistan. 

Little Pakistan began to emerge in the 1980s in Midwood, Brooklyn, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood at the time. Pakistani immigration to the United States initially increased after the passage of the Hart-Cellar Act in 1965: numbers continued to grow throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but never reached above 6,000 immigrants per year.^¹ Rashad B. Mohammed, the owner of Little Pakistan’s longest-standing Pakistani clothing store, Atif Future Fabrics and Appliances, shared with me her memories of immigrating to the United States and moving to the neighborhood:

“ I came in 1983 with my mom, dad, and my two brothers from England…And it’s changed a lot. It’s developed, it’s progressed, gotten bigger and bigger. When I first came, probably in about four or five months I saw about two or three [Pakistani] families…And there was only, I think, Punjab grocery and one [store] on Newkirk. So you couldn't get a halal variety of things and what you need, but now you can't miss a store and there's so many on every block…Before we couldn’t get halal meat here, we used to get our meat from the Jewish people.” ^¹

The first wave of Pakistani immigrants arriving in the 1980s found themselves navigating a city with a very small Muslim population. Nevertheless, as they built community, they attempted to replicate the traditions and customs they had grown up with by adjusting to what they could find in America. These Pakistani immigrants would go on to build cultural sites for community members along Coney Island Avenue, laying the foundation for the neighborhood now known as Little Pakistan. The oldest and most culturally significant site in Little Pakistan is Makki Masjid, a place of worship for Muslims built in 1982.^¹ Pakistani Americans are a predominantly Muslim community, and the masjid served as an affirmation of religious identity in a nation with a lengthy history of anti-Asian and Islamophobic sentiments. Makki Masjid drew crowds of worshippers and quickly became a central pillar of the neighborhood. It served as an important catalyst for the growth of the neighborhood and helped attract many future immigrants to the neighborhood. 

As the community continued to expand, small businesses reminiscent of stores found in Pakistan also began to open up, such as Pakistani grocery stores that could meet the community’s need for halal meat and spices to authentically replicate dishes from back home. The neighborhood’s first Pakistani grocery store, Punjab Grocery, opened its doors in the 1980s, as did Punjab Restaurant, which would become a well-known rest stop for Pakistani cab drivers.^¹

The formation of the neighborhood occurred because of the immense resilience and hard work of the once-small community; it did not occur without its difficulties. Javed Ahmed, a cab driver and longtime resident of Little Pakistan, shared what life was like for early Pakistani immigrants: 

“The people that arrived in ‘80, ‘81, those people went through a very tough time. Because if you don't have papers, if you don't have legal status, then nobody will give you a house on rent. This was the problem of those earlier people. They used to sleep in the subway at night. There was also the danger that somebody could rob you…So what did people do? Whatever money they made, they would go somewhere right away and send it to Pakistan through some bank or other. They didn't keep much money with them. Here too, many new people who came who didn't have legal status, couldn't open a bank account. What did they do? They used to put money inside pillows, or they would put money under their bed.”^¹ 

As this initial wave of Pakistani immigrants attempted to build new lives for themselves and to navigate a new, unfamiliar home, many ran into issues. Legal status made life slightly easier, but questions of safety, affordability, and livability still troubled many. Those who were undocumented fared even worse, like the Pakistani immigrants living on the fringes of the city, unable to find lodging or economic stability in the city that they had given up everything for. Despite the abolition of the national origins quota system, the United States government still maintained considerable restrictions on who could enter the country. A preference system was established in the Immigration Act of 1965, prioritizing immigrants who were “highly skilled professionals:” in other words, immigrants with traditionally middle-class jobs like doctors and engineers, and those who already had established family in the United States.^¹

However, working-class Pakistanis who did not have relatives living in the United States who could sponsor them found themselves unable to legally immigrate. Desperate to seek out opportunities for better lives and finding themselves on the margins of even an expanded, more liberal immigration system, some Pakistani immigrants made their way to America without proper documentation. They struggled to find housing, employment, and community as they lived their lives in fear of being caught and deported. 

The story of undocumented South Asian immigrants is one that has been largely excluded from mainstream narratives. In 2022, the Center of Migration Studies estimated that there were approximately 52,000 undocumented Pakistanis residing in the nation, with accurate estimates limited by the difficulties of collecting such sensitive information. For decades the community has been struggling to survive in New York City, alongside many other communities of undocumented immigrants who continue to live in fear and uncertainty. 

This first generation of Pakistani Americans who arrived in the 1980s made countless sacrifices and etched out a home for their community in the streets and storefronts of Midwood. Little Pakistan began to grow considerably in the following decade following the passage of the 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act, which completely overhauled the immigration system and increased the total worldwide cap for immigrants from 290,000 to 675,000 a year.^¹ This federal law established a preference system to prioritize entry for immigrants who were either reuniting with family in the United States or entering as skilled workers.^¹ It also introduced a diversity lottery to encourage immigration from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. In the 1990s, a total of 124,500 Pakistanis were admitted into the United States.^¹ Many of these Pakistanis would arrive in New York City, and hearing tales of an emerging Little Pakistan, settled in Midwood. 

The neighborhood continued to grow with the opening of its first Pakistani clothing store in 1991, Atif Future Fabrics and Appliances.^¹ Between 1990 and 2000, the number of Pakistanis living in New York City skyrocketed from 14,911 to nearly 40,000.^¹ Of these Pakistanis, 16,872 lived in Brooklyn, with approximately a quarter of them residing in District 14 in Midwood, where Little Pakistan is located.^¹ The 1990s were a time of growth and prosperity for the emerging Little Pakistan, as it grew into the vibrant, bustling neighborhood it is today.

On September 11, 2001, four U.S. commercial planes were hijacked by members of Al-Qaeda, an extremist group, who intended to crash the planes in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and New York City. Two of the four planes hit the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan, the centerpieces of the World Trade Center Complex. The attack was disastrous, killing 2,977 people, covering the surrounding neighborhoods with hazardous dust and debris, and entirely destroying the Twin Towers. The nation was gripped by fear, anxiety, and disbelief that such an attack could occur on American soil. In the hours after the attack, politicians and inflammatory media reports placed the blame on Muslims, feeding into an Islamophobic frenzy spreading throughout the country. After this catastrophic day, Little Pakistan and other Muslim communities would never be the same, entering into an era of fear and repression. 

On October 21, 2001 — just six weeks after 9/11 — former president George W. Bush signed into law the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, also known as the USA PATRIOT Act. This law significantly expanded the federal government’s ability to surveil Americans without consequence, representing a shocking and systemic infringement on their basic rights.^¹ Surveillance laws were altered to make it easier for the government to monitor phone and email communications, bank and credit records, and even internet activity.^¹ The PATRIOT Act also allowed government agents to “enter a house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupant is away, search through his/her property and take photographs—in some cases seizing property and electronic communications—and not tell the owner until later.”^¹ These laws, of course, were not applied equally; almost immediately, they were used as the basis for a blunt digital form of racial profiling.^¹ As the ACLU would later note, "While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.” 

National Security Letters, a type of administrative subpoena, could be issued without the approval of a judge and used to obtain the personal information of everyday Americans. Between 2003 and 2006, the FBI issued 192,499 NSLs, which only led to one terror-related conviction that would have occurred even without the Patriot Act. The Muslims who received these NSLs lived in fear of what the government would do to them and their families. But there was a secondary impact: they were also isolated within their own communities due to the PATRIOT Act forbidding them from informing anyone else that they had received the letter, an act later proven to be unconstitutional in several legal cases. 

“And at that time it was the Bush administration, and they released a lot of laws at that time that just kind of, like, bypassed all of the legal regulations, the rights that we had just in the name of safety for the country. So they could grab you, take you, detain you. And it could be for months or even years. And if they see, okay, this person was innocent, there's no apology, there's nothing. It's like, ‘Well, it's in the name of freedom and our safety, we had to do this.’” - N, an anonymous resident of Little Pakistan

In 2002, the Bush administration also started a Special Registration Initiative, officially known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS).^¹ This program “targeted foreign nationals from 25 countries based on religion, ethnicity, and national origin.” The NYPD forced boys and men above the age of 16 with ancestries from 25 different nations with predominantly Muslim populations to register their personal information as a means to monitor them. Considering the extent of the surveillance Muslim Americans faced after 9/11, which violated their Fourth Amendment right to protection from unlawful searches and seizures, it is disturbing that former President Bush made the decision to renew the PATRIOT Act in 2006. In 2005, Bush declared— with a straight face — that the PATRIOT Act had “a four-year track record with no verified civil liberties abuses.” 

“Before 9/11, you used to be able to enjoy a lot of freedom. A lot of freedom. Many people in the Desi community used to wear their traditional dress and shoes, and go to Coney Island. One person would wear a tehmat (traditional Punjabi garment), another would wear a pagdi (South Asian headdress), somebody would wear khusse (South Asian footwear); Desi style of clothing and shoes. So, they would feel like they’re in their own home.” - Javed Ahmed

In the months and years following 9/11, hundreds of thousands of lives across the country were disrupted and thrown into chaos for no reason other than state-sanctioned racism, and the experiences of Little Pakistan's residents were no exception. Repeating historical patterns of anti-Asian hate and Islamophobia, in which racist state policy emboldened racist social violence, the abuse Muslim Americans faced was not limited to official programs and policies alone. In the six months immediately following 9/11, bias crimes against Arabs, Muslims, and those assumed to be so spiked by 1,700%.^¹ A Human Rights Watch report revealed that the people most vulnerable to hate crimes post 9/11 were those who were easily identifiable or assumed to be Arab or Muslim, such as Sikh people who were mistaken as Muslim or Muslim women who wore hijabs.^¹ 

A resident of Little Pakistan, who requested to stay anonymous, was a student during the 9/11 years. They recount how people no longer felt safe wearing cultural and religious garments:

“People, like women, were taking their hijab off. Anything that could identify them, like say a woman here would wear salwar kameez, they were changing that, too, wearing more Western clothing…men with the beard, the people were taking their beards off, not wearing the kufi or any hat or anything. You know? Just anything to make them look less Muslim.”

The sense of security and safety within their community enclave that residents of Little Pakistan had painstakingly built over decades shattered, as it, among other Muslim enclaves, was targeted by surveillance and over-policing. As remembered in interview excerpts like the one above, traditional garments that Pakistanis and other communities had once proudly donned to represent ethnic and religious identities were now seen as markers of terrorism.

One of the most devastating tactics used by the NYPD post-9/11 was stoking mistrust within community spaces by sending their own operatives into them. The NYPD created a secret task force called the "Demographics Unit" — which they denied existed, until leaked documents proved otherwise in 2011 — that was used to covertly map and surveil Muslim communities in New York City, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and New Jersey.^¹ This unit collected data on “individuals as well as places and organizations like mosques, cafes, student organizations, and businesses either owned or frequented by Muslim people or people of Middle Eastern descent.”^¹ A key tactic within this unit was to send undercover officers into masjids, where Muslim men frequently gathered for prayer, socialization, and community building, as well as into other community spaces. Surveillance was conducted on all masjids within 100 miles of New York City. In many cases, the NYPD also used Muslim New Yorkers against their own communities, pressuring them to act as informants and spies by infiltrating community spaces like masjids and small businesses. A 2011 investigation revealed that the FBI had 15,000 registered informants, and often used deportation among other threats to coerce informants into cooperating.^¹ The NYPD continued to deny the existence of the Demographics Unit, even after leaked NYPD documents revealed that their specific instructions were to “identify and map ethnic hotspots” of “ancestries of interest."^¹

“You know, we know they came into the masjids. They had people come in not just to see what's going on, but I feel like they came to instigate something, to push people, and that didn't help at all. You're not trying to get the bad guys. You're trying to make a bad guy and then say you caught them. And it is sad that there are a number of people that aren't [accounted for], we don't know what happened to them. Some people actually did leave on their own accord, but other people were taken. And you don't know what the truth is, and they won't tell you.” - An anonymous resident of Little Pakistan

In 2012, when testifying for the federal civil rights case Hassan v. City of New York, filed on the behalf of Muslim Americans who were targeted and surveilled after 9/11, Assistant Chief of NYPD Intelligence Division Thomas Galati admitted, "I never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a Demographics report, and I'm here since 2006…I don't recall other ones prior to my arrival. Again, that's always a possibility. I am not aware of any."^¹ Other parts of Galati’s testimony included his admission that a business “can be labeled a ‘location of concern’ whenever police can expect to find groups of Middle Easterners there.”^¹ The NYPD violated the constitutional rights of Muslim Americans and sowed seeds of distrust within their communities, creating an environment of terror and paranoia in the name of "national security" only to produce no results.^¹

Thomas Galati also commented on a specific instance where plainclothes NYPD officers surveilled two Pakistani men who were discussing the nation’s anti-Muslim sentiments after 9/11 and airport security, which they described as unfairly targeting Muslims. Galati defended spying on these men and collecting this information — because the men had committed the offense of publicly speaking Urdu. According to Galati, this kind of linguistic profiling was necessary and could allegedly help police find future terrorists in the future. “‘I'm seeing Urdu. I'm seeing them identify the individuals involved in that are Pakistani,’ Galati explained. ‘I'm using that information for me to determine that this would be a kind of place that a terrorist would be comfortable in.’ He also noted, "Most Urdu speakers from that region would be of concern, so that's why it's important to me."^¹

These statements speak to the NYPD's treatment of Muslims after 9/11: unjust, racist suspicion of Muslims on the basis of ethnic and religious features, as well as targeted harassment of those who expressed frustration with the unconstitutional treatment they were experiencing. As a major community of Muslim Americans, Little Pakistan was rocked by the aftermath of 9/11. 

“ There were less people coming in the stores for months and months. Less clientele and people just scared to come out and, you know, [there] wasn't the security, the safeness. Before September, you never would think anything.” - Rashad B. Mohammed 

Placed under siege within their own community by the sweeping surveillance and policing initiatives of the NYPD, anxiety spread throughout Little Pakistan. For undocumented Pakistanis, who were already experiencing difficulties due to their lack of legal status, the fear was even more pronounced. A survey conducted by COPO, a non-profit organization created to aid Muslims after 9/11, estimated that approximately 20,000 Pakistanis left the neighborhood.^¹ Businesses shut down, families deserted their homes, and those who stayed were paralyzed by the fear of being detained, deported, or having their homes raided. For more information about the community’s response to surveillance and other specifics of post-9/11 surveillance of Muslim Americans, please read East’s exhibit, found here. 

“Those who didn’t have papers, those poor people became underground. Many people didn’t go to work, for so long those poor people didn’t go to work. They would ask for money from others and live off of that at home, they lived while hiding. Because at that time, people were afraid that if they went out, they would be caught, [or] there would be problems.” - Javed Ahmed

Unconstitutional and discriminatory policies, combined with inflammatory media that targeted Muslims, fanned the flames of Islamophobia. A 2018 study examining media portrayals of minorities found that “U.S. newspaper coverage of Muslims is significantly more negative in tone than coverage of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, or Jews,” and that articles discussing Muslims frequently center around themes of foreign conflict, terrorism, and law and order.^¹ Mainstream American media has historically represented Muslims as outsiders and enemies of American society. Focusing on violence and terrorism while ignoring all other aspects of an enormous, multi-faceted community is a conscious decision made to reinforce narratives that demonize Muslims.  

“At that time I knew one or two [men] who were doing work in construction. So those poor guys were in a construction van when they were caught. In a van, legally only the people who are sitting in the two seats are allowed to travel. But what our Desi people do, two people sit up front, three or four sit in the open area where the tools are in the back of the van. At that time there were many checkpoints. So they were about to enter the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, when they checked and saw six or seven people sitting behind them.  It was illegal for them to sit like that and come. But right away, the 1010 [WINS Radio] people spread the news that Al Qaeda members were caught, this happened, that happened. The media used to spread a lot of lies at that time…Afterward they did an investigation and they were just poor common laborers.” - Javed Ahmed

After 9/11, Muslim Americans throughout the United States were experiencing racist misrepresentation in mainstream media and culture, unlawful treatment at the hands of state and federal agents, and violent, Islamophobic attacks. Even the false perception of being Muslim was dangerous in a moment where racial profiling was not just accepted, but encouraged. Those who were mistakenly identified as Muslim were not spared from violence. 

The first documented murder committed in retaliation for 9/11 was the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man mistaken as a Muslim due to his turban, a symbol of the Sikh faith. On September 15th, 2001, in Mesa, Arizona, Balbir was murdered as he was planting flowers outside of his gas station.^¹ He was shot by a man claiming to seek retribution for the terrorist attacks four days prior. According to Balbir’s brother, about half an hour before he was shot, Balbir emptied out his wallet and donated approximately $75 dollars to a fund for 9/11 victims.^¹ Out of the five Muslim residents of Little Pakistan that I interviewed for this project, all of them paid respect to the Sikh community and commented on the violence that Sikhs experienced after 9/11 as a result of ignorance and Islamophobia. 

“It was just so much ignorance going on…I feel like it wasn't only Muslims, it was also like our Sikh brothers and sisters, [Islamophobes] were so ignorant they couldn't tell the difference between Muslims and Sikhs. So a lot of Sikh men, because they wear a turban, they were also targeted.” - A, a resident of Little Pakistan^¹

Islamophobia and how it manifests in the American public has little to do with religion. It has everything to do with bigotry, nativism, and xenophobia. Those who are perceived to be Muslims are thought of as un-American and enemies of the state. Being Muslim became associated with violence and terrorism, stereotypes that endure to the present. The stigma of being seen as a perpetual foreigner became newly deadly in the wake of 9/11. The governmental and societal responses to the September 11th attacks forever changed the way that Muslim identity is conceptualized and represented in the United States, leaving scars on Little Pakistan that have yet to completely fade. 

After being subjected to a lengthy period of discrimination and surveillance, Little Pakistan has slowly been rebuilding. Families have returned to the neighborhood, and Coney Island Avenue is dotted with new small businesses that have opened up. If you take a walk through the neighborhood today, you might see a group of hijabis chatting over cups of coffee in one of the many new cafés, or men leaving Makki Masjid after completing prayers. Mothers and fathers scurry through the bustling grocery stores, urging their children who daydream of Cocomo biscuits and Slantys to mind their behavior. Although it retains its distinctly Pakistani features, the neighborhood is changing, no longer as closed off and insular as it became within the atmosphere of paranoia and fear immediately post-9/11. 

“There is a difference compared to the past, certainly, but the level of discrimination Muslims face in the media is perhaps unlike what any other community experiences. The media still spreads a great deal of racism. I say this because I’ve always followed the news—reading newspapers and listening to the BBC since childhood. Even after coming here, I listen to stations like 1010—that news radio station—as well as CBS or NPR.” - Javed Ahmed^¹

Although Little Pakistan has remained resilient and continues to rebuild, Islamophobia remains prevalent in the United States and in global narratives. The dehumanization of Muslims abroad is inextricably linked to the treatment of Muslims within the United States, a connection that becomes clear when examining the costs of the War on Terror, an international-scale military campaign launched by the U.S. government after 9/11. 

“ I can't recall exactly how it was taught then, but we definitely went over the Iraq War. And the textbooks we had kinda just followed that narrative of like, ‘Oh, there's bad guys and good guys. America's always the good guy.’” - K, an anonymous resident of Little Pakistan^¹

The true cost of the War on Terror remains largely untold in public school classrooms, and discussions surrounding it are often one-dimensional, failing to reckon with the immensely destructive impact it had on millions of Muslims and their nations. 

“I feel like the American education system is very broken; we didn’t really learn about 9/11. I feel like a lot of what I knew about 9/11 was just because I heard it from other places and other kids, but we didn’t have a unit that was like post-2000s in the U.S. It was only in high school that I learned the specifics surrounding 9/11 and all of that, so very late into my education…they never talked about the surveillance that was done to Muslim Americans in the U.S. and abroad. Millions and millions of people were killed and displaced for crimes that they didn’t commit, that’s what we didn’t learn. - A, an anonymous resident of Little Pakistan^¹

While Muslims within the United States were being systematically surveilled and harassed by government agents, the United States government engaged in alleged counterterrorism efforts in 85 countries in the years that followed 9/11.^¹ 20 years after America's declaration of the "War on Terror," the political orders of Muslim nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have been destroyed by American invasion and regional destabilization, and hundreds of thousands have been killed.^¹ Hate crimes against Muslim Americans astronomically increased post-9/11, and in a 2016 study published by the United States Army War College, statistical modeling showed that “countries the U.S. invaded had 143 more terror attacks per year than countries the U.S. did not invade.”^¹ The violent history of the War on Terror is invisible in public school education despite the central role the United States government played in perpetrating it.

“That is, you all are our children. You opened your eyes here and had everything available. We saw these things being made from scratch.” - Javed Ahmed 

The history of Little Pakistan also remains largely untold and unknown. Even I, someone who lived there for the first 17 years of my life and will always have a deep connection to the neighborhood, had no idea the extent to which the community was affected by post-9/11 surveillance. It was only when I set out to do this project that I learned what our elders had been through, and I made the connection between Islamophobia in the past and present. For Little Pakistan to truly heal, the brutal experiences of Muslim Americans post-9/11 must be acknowledged and studied as a part of American history, instead of being swept under the rug. Fighting the erasure of our history in New York City through education will ensure that our stories are never forgotten and will guide us through the future. 

I first learned about the depth of post-9/11 surveillance of Muslims in college, years too late for someone who had been a public school student all her life. I’d only heard bits and pieces of how Little Pakistan was affected by it growing up: our elders often hinted toward things, but were reluctant to explain anything specific to us children. I’m a proud Kashmiri American, but Little Pakistan was my home for the first 17 years of my life. The neighborhood and community could never be anything but my own. Now that I’ve learned what our elders went through as they built our neighborhood brick by brick, I understand why they kept such a painful history to themselves. 

I knew our stories were excluded from the mainstream history classroom because acknowledging what happened to us would mean questioning the relatively recent actions of the United States government, and in turn, questioning the purpose of modern day-imperialism in Muslim nations. But I couldn’t accept that my community’s painful truths had no place in the classroom when I had learned so much from them.

I started this project because I believed in the value of the stories of those around me, and I believed that students all over New York City could learn something from my community members. The five people I interviewed are people who I have known for years: Elders in my community who are longtime residents of Little Pakistan, and my childhood friends who are now young working professionals. I felt it was necessary to put Muslim voices at the center of this project because of the ways in which our community has been grossly misrepresented in mainstream media and history. 

Although this project is a history exhibit discussing the recent past, I want to emphasize that hate is an enduring issue that needs to be taken seriously in the contemporary moment. Xenophobia and Islamophobia have taken different shapes throughout the ages, but ultimately remain unchanged at their core. In 2025, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) received 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim hate, the highest complaints in a single year that CAIR has ever recorded since they first began publishing civil rights reports in 1996.

I can not stress enough that these recent hate crimes are in no way isolated events. Claims of a “First Invasion by Hindoos and Mohammedans” in 1906, a series of retaliation murders after 9/11, and a four-year-long ban on Muslim immigration from 2017 to 2021 are only a few examples of how Islamophobia and the othering of Muslims has persisted in America. It’s time to stop looking away from these truths, which have been purposely hidden behind bureaucratic tape to grant our government and its officers clemency for their crimes against Muslims. 

I’m extremely grateful to those who were willing to share their experiences with me, and I hope that this project brings my community one step closer to reclaiming and rewriting the narratives that surround us Muslim Americans. 

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